Been talking to a guy on the NACC forum who has "locked" the suspension on his car by replacing the rubber buffers on the cans,with nylon?
Reckons it now lands level instead of nose first when yumping?

Dave,
so many bright ideas, so little understanding?
All he has done is disable the anti-pitch feature of the suspension, which Citroen took the time and trouble to design and produce.

Mind you, the same effect is often produced during poorly executed chassis changes, when little or no grease has been used on the sliding surfaces between the canisters and their end fittings.
Give it a year or two and everything's rusted solid.

ken

Like an Acadiane.

or an Ami Super and later AKS400?
Or to put it another way, only the heaviest vehicles with most payload used non-interlinked suspension.

ken

KEN




I talked to a couple of racers today. One used locked suspension with steel rings inside the buffers. the other didn't but pointed out modern replacement buffers are a lot stiffer than the genuine Citroen buffers. But they are on flat tracks with uprated springs - different.

The point Is the 2CV spring cans are designed to move - gives that soft fore and aft pitching. But put a heavy load in the back of a standard 2CV and it raises the front - that's why you got the headlight adjustment. Works in reverse too. Hit a large yump at speed - enough to get you air born - the front suspension compresses pulling the cans forward against the the buffers which pulls the rear tie-rods forward and the rear suspension down - giving the tail an upward flick - and you land nose first - hard!

With the Acadian's rigidly mounted oversize spring cans you can put 400Kg in the back and the nose hardly lifts. I locked the suspension on my 2CV because I frequently pull a fairly heavily loaded trailer and I didn't like it wagging the nose up and down. The design of the can is more than strong enough to take the loads of rigid nylon buffers.

And before you ask the yellow blade is a Scot stabiliser. And the square tubes take a bike rack

Dave,
I've only seen one set of replacement buffers and they were as soft as original ones which had been dosed with engine oil...

I find it hard to believe that the 'anti-pitch' connection produces enough lift on the rear of a car to make it land nose down.
Rather, there's just enough 'lift' to keep the rig level, rather than pitching as it goes over bumps.

http://members.westnet.com.au/hobbier/C ... pslow.html

On a 2CV buggy which I helped build years ago, which was given a heck of a thrashing over rough ground at one of the (Inter)national events, a photograph was taken of it with all four wheels off the ground over a jump.
That photograph later appeared on the front cover of the magazine and from what I recall, its 'airborne stance' was level, not nose down.

Have you checked the nose weight of your trailer?
I tow most of the time, often with 5 chassis on the back and have adjusted the setup so that there's no more than 25kg on the towball, so there's no problem with the tail wagging the dog...

ken

Surely once the car's in the air, the suspension's not going to have any effect - it's all down to weight distribution?

Adrian,
true, but unless you're doing your best to trash a car as in that video from the Touareg Trail, gravity won't usually have enough time to effect the angle of dangle.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDeh80LA ... ontext-cha

Ken

Its not my car/van,it belongs to a guy on the NACC forum.

It's anti-pitch only when crossing over a bump on the surface of the road, trying to keep the car level. When you brake and put more weight on the front, the spring compresses pulling the can forwards and raising the rear even more than the weight shift would. Before I adjusted my cans with proper buffer clearances, I had the buffers slightly compressed and virtually no pitch during braking, but now that I have, the car dives significantly more under braking and after stopping completely it rocks further back before stabilising. Oh well. Adds to all the comical effects of driving a silly wobbly 2CV Anyway, after the adjustment he suspension is way smoother on pavement cracks, small potholes etc. so overall well worth it.